My husband goes on short, quick trips to Atlanta so that throws a wrench in life. 

I'm trying my hand at digital scrapbooking and spending all of my free computer time whipping up layouts...starting with December 2009. I've made it through June 2010 just in time for my first eve scrapbooking crop this Saturday. My goal is a month a day so I hope to be caught up, or to the current year in no time. Yet so far this week I haven't worked on 1 month at all.

Rachel had a fever one week which allowed my husband and I to do the fun rotation - he works mornings while I watch her, then he comes home and watches her in the evenings while I go to work until midnight. It's not fun but it works and we really don't have any other options. 

The weather has been crazy nice and we've been going to the park on weekends for a quick mile walk and some time on the slide and swings. Rachel loves going there and last weekend while we were leaving my husband and I were swinging her by her arms. This resulted in pain, thus resulting in a 1 hour ER visit which resulted in Nursemaid's Elbow. We figured this was what was going on since we googled it so this diagnosis at the ER was to be expected. She was fine within minutes and running around the ER with her "monkey jammas" on.

We met a friend and went to the Ann Arbor Hands on Museum last week, and after I sort through some photos, I'll be sure to post how our day went! We had a great time, all five of us girls did! I wish we could do it more often! 

Next week is single parent week as my husband heads to Germany for the week! Which takes pressure off of me having to figure out what to do for Valentine's day. It's probably a win-win for both of us. 

I found some tutorials online (here and here) and in the end modified both to make my own creation I call the "modified beanie." The first project was a touch challenging because I had to use my button foot on my sewing machine to put a button hole in my towel. It worked awesome but I was unable to make it happen again so I just went with a different pattern.

The modified beanie pattern is my favorite, because it was the quickest to make. I used a lid to my medium size pyrex bowl to cut a nice semi-circle pattern. And I had leftover elastic in my sewing box. 

I need practice with this because my sewing isn't all that straight and I struggle sewing the towel together before adding the topper. But that's okay,they are functional and I have six more of my own to make as soon as I wash the towels and fabric. 

The amount of presents was enormous. We began the festivities around 2:05 p.m.

We took the first intermission at 3:05 p.m. We had potty breaks, dessert and beverages. 

We took the second intermission at 4:30 p.m. and Avery was kaput by then. 

The gift opening stopped around 5:20 p.m. But the festivities didn't stop there. We played games and had more snacks. And then after all of that we opened MORE gifts for Rachel's birthday. I'm exhausted just typing about it! 

Here are some additional photos of the holiday event! 

Avery just applied chap stick and then I took this photo. I think I need to suggest to her mom that Avery needs clear chap stick. 

Her last and favorite Christmas gift was the baby stroller. 

And after it was all done, Avery asked me to build her a tent. Since all of the chairs were being used at the table for games, snacking, coffee and visiting, we had to improvise. 

It measures approximately 18" x 22". I made sure my pallet wood was nice and flat and held it together with screws and two vertical pieces on the back. I sorted my buttons into piles - brown and green/blue and laid out the design on the boards following the idea I found on Pinterest. I glued the buttons on the wood one-by-one with tacky glue (this task took about an hour). I let it dry and hung it in my bathroom.

Rachel and Joslynn pose in front of the tree.

Grandpa must have given them some giggle juice!

Rachel loved playing with the Charlie Brown Nativity Set. She lays down all of the figures and says they are going "nite, nite."

One of my favorite photos of my niece, Joslynn. She was all over that box.

Once the presents were cleared away, Grandpa showed Rachel his train. But it wasn't working at first so the two of them had to figure out what was going on. She was following his every move.

And before we left, Rachel was snuggling with Patzi on the couch. 

My co-worker gave me a bread machine a while ago and I've been attempting to perfect cinnamon rolls. I make the dough in the machine, spread cinnamon, butter and sugar on them and roll and cut them. I then put them in a pan and freeze them. When I want to eat them, I take them out, leave them on the counter overnight where they rise and are ready to go into the oven in the morning. And they are delicious. I am getting better but the raw rolled cinnamon roll doesn't look very appealing. And I may have forgotten yeast in one of the batches for the teachers. Should still be tasty just not as fluffy as the others.

I wrapped them in foil tins I found at the dollar store and added a decorative top with instructions. I just hope they tasted okay.

Santa came on the morning of December 24th and Charlie, our elf, went home with him. I think as Rachel gets older, Charlie will be a tad more creative in how he returns from the North Pole rather than just hanging in a different place.

Rachel woke up at 6:15 am that morning and didn't go back to sleep so we just began the present unwrapping. I think she had six or eight things to open and she was somewhat into it and somewhat crabby. Even her dad commented and said something like, "Rachel, I don't think this how your mom and I pictured  you at Christmas." And I forgot to get out the camera until the very end.

Everything was done and cleaned up by 8 am. I made some dishes for the upcoming festivities - cinnamon rolls for breakfast at home, cheese potatoes and herb bread for Christmas Eve and a killer Peanut Butter Brownie Torte for Christmas day. It was just a busy day getting things ready and cooking and packing the car for Christmas Eve at my father-in-law's house. On Christmas day we drove to the Thumb to celebrate with my family and then on the 26th went to hang out with my aunt in Sterling Heights. It was busy and tiring and I'm kind of glad it's over. Every year I tell myself I won't travel as much the following year, and every year we travel.

Rockwell is always in the spirit!

Crazy excited to help her mom open her present! (You can see the tent Santa made for her in the background)

We've been wearing our penguin finger puppets and practicing our song so we shared it with our friends at school. She loves to sing it and so did the kids. It's so great being next door to her school!

 What on Earth do you do with....homemade Fish Graham Crackers...

...Penguin Cups...

...homemade penguin finger puppets...

...penguin sticker sheets and a thank you card with penguin songs....

...you put them all in a gift bag for friends!

And the penguin finger puppet is attached to the back of each bag with a piece of velcro so we could take off the puppet, sing our songs and put it on for each kid to take home.

A penguin party isn't complete without a penguin cake! This was SUPER EASY to make and I found the recipe here. 

 I followed the directions except, I used Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge Frosting, which means I didn't tint the frosting with black food coloring as the recipe stated. I also made the wings out of chocolate. I just melted chocolate chips in a zipper bag, cut the end and traced an oval pattern on waxed paper. Once they were dry, I affixed them with frosting, flat side down. I used necco wafters and m&ms for the eyes.

I made these super easy penguin olives and a cheese ball igloo for snack. I thought the Penguins were going to be very hard to make so I told myself from the beginning I would only make 12 - for the number of kids in her class. I used jumbo and medium olives, one carrot and half a brick of cream cheese, heated in the microwave. I then cut a triangle out of the jumbo olives and used a pastry bag with tip to fill the bellies with cream cheese.

The cheese ball recipe was very basic: 2 bricks cream cheese, 1 packet ranch and 2 cups shredded cheese. It's quite mild, so it might be perfect for toddlers. I put it in a bowl with plastic wrap and then let it set up/harden. I heated the other half of the cream cheese brick in the microwave and spread it on the igloo, then let it set up and used a skewer to make ice blocks on the igloo.

And of course my daughter wore her penguin tee shirt on her special day! Two penguins for a 2 year old! 

This year Rachel helped me. She even decorated one cookie for her "gam-pa". And when she was finished, she got to eat a cookies. The photos tell the story. 

I decided that price was outrageous so I decided to make my own tree. I was able to print the tree the actual size on about 15 sheets of 13x19 paper at work. I pieced it all together and then loosely traced the back side of it with a charcoal pencil (taped it to the sliding door to see through it). After you trace the back, you flip over the piece and trace the front with a regular pencil onto your wood. This allows the charcoal to transfer the image onto your wood. It's similar to using 'old school' carbon paper.  I should probably let you know I reversed the tree image and cut from the backside of the wood.

I him hawed about what type of wood to use, I didn't want it to be too flimsy so I nixed luan, I didn't want it to be too heavy and hard to cut so I decided not to use MDF board. And in the end, I just used the left over 3/4" plywood that we had in our garage. This decision was mainly because it resulted in no additional funds spent and we had the wood sitting there, left over from a floor fix from six months ago. The tree is in two pieces, the top and the trunk.

I cut it out with a jig saw - my first time using one and I love it. I bought a variety pack of blades and used the wood one they said was for "scroll" cutting. It took me about an hour to cut the entire piece, I broke one blade and didn't have any hand injuries or mishaps. I was pretty impressed with myself (thus boosting my confidence for more jigsaw projects). 

I sanded the good side and then my awesome husband cut two small holes to add the shaker pegs. I glued the shaker pegs into the piece. I painted it and we hung it on our wall (conveniently on a stud) with six screws - 3 on the top and 3 on the bottom. I covered the screws with wood filler and painted them. I planned to wood fill and paint the seam where the trunk and body met, but it didn't need it so I left it as is.

It's in our bathroom and all that needs to be done is the trim around it. 

I encourage you to tackle this project. If you don't have the ability to print and piece it together on your own, you can always contact a blueprint company and ask them to print it for you. I looked into this option and it was about $15 to have the tree printed.  If you would like the tree file I used for my layout, simply email me, I'll even send it actual size - just include the height and width of your area. Be sure to put "Towel Tree Pattern" in the subject line to avoid your request becoming spam. {kstrohs(at)hotmail(dot)com}

I loosely followed the tutorials of two women (you can find their instructions here and here). Initially I wanted to trim out my headboard, but I didn't have one piece of pallet wood long enough to trim out the long end, and I liked it without trim, so I left it as-is. I began by adjusting the measurements to work for the bed we have in our guest bedroom.

I grabbed some pallets from work and got busy the week my husband was in Germany. I spent almost every night in the garage tackling the super hard project of tearing apart pallets with pry bars, hammers and sweat and bullets. I learned quickly that I grit my teeth when something is difficult because my jaw began to get sore. The destruction seemed to take forever. Probably because I wasn't quite sure what I was doing and because I was trying to be careful with my wood. I hated it when I worked so hard to tear out staples and nails and then on the last end, I'd split the board!

I probably didn't do this job properly, but it is basically a frame covered with pallet boards. I did cut he pallets for the frame, because I didn't care about the nail holes being in the back, and cutting allowed me to keep things straight. Notice I said straight, not square. I didn't square anything up, because I really don't know how. I just eyeball things and I'm usually pretty accurate, and this time was no different.

I didn't take any tutorial/how-to photos because there are a gazillion blogs on the internet that have great plans complete with photos. I'll just show you the finished piece and tell you I spent $25 on this project - a can of ZAR Fruitwood stain and some brackets/braces for the board on the back side and finishing nails for the boards on the front. Yes, the boards are held on with finishing nails ** gasp ** I know and I said above I probably didn't do this job properly!

And it's always great to taste the nasty paint water and the paint brush! 

This is the "nail painting station."

Now she loves them. Whenever she sees her toes she says "pretty toes" and "painted toes" and "mommy paint toes." And since this photo, we have changed colors for the season and are now wearing OPI's Suzi Loves Cowboys Brown.

super cheezy grin!